Marking gauges with round fences have been all the rage for a few years. I've been feeling out of it/left out because I don't have one .

No more. I found this little gem at a yard sale today.

Unlike the modern gauges I see in the catalogs/online, this one has points instead of wheels, but the points are done cleverly: a square shape on the end of the rod, with sharpened corners:

You could get a lot of use from this before you had to stone the corners for sharpness again.

There's no maker's name on it, but it's very well done for a commodity tool. The knurling on the setscrew for the fence is particularly fine. I've been to this particular sale in past years, and purchased machinist's tools; so I suspect this was also a machinist's tool.

Another demonstration that there's not many new ideas under the woodworking sun.
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*It is not well known that this is the original title of the song, "Do You Love Me, Now That I Can Dance?" made famous by the Contours. The original song was written by Megan Patfitzrick, a young woodworker celebrating the purchase of her first marking gauge. She first sang it at an open mic night to a total audience of two. Fortunately/amazingly, one of them was Berry Gordy Jr. He recognized the potential of the song, and talked to Megan after the show, asking if he could adapt it for a less obscure audience, and promising co-writing credits. After a little work, Gordy offered it to the Contours (a fitting group's name for a song by a woodworker), who then made it famous. You can hear echoes of the original song in the lyrics, such as "Do you love me/I'm in the groove," an obvious reference to marking out for a groove in a piece of stock. Alas, Gordy lost the napkin on which he'd written Megan's name and contact information, and she never received the recognition or the royalties from the song, and eventually had to scrape out a living editing reprints of Shakespeare poems.

For those not familiar with the song (you're an international member, you're too young, you never paid attention to popular music when you were young, you can't remember a darn thing from your youth), here are a couple of renditions by the Contours:

(06-17-2017, 07:24 PM)enjuneer Wrote: It is a machinist's marking gauge. I picked one up last year that was still in the original tube. It is marked "#444 Scratch Gauge, Hardened Head and Cutter, Union Tool Co., Orange, Mass., USA"

.................
Yep...I have one also...

"By God, we are First Marines, and all the communist bastards in the world cannot stop us from going where we intend to go"
Col. Chesty Puller USMC At the Chosin Reservoir North Korea 1950, "The Forgotten War"

Now Jack, really, is there any machinist's marking, measuring or layout tool that you don't own, or haven't in the past owned but sold??? You are the master source for that sort of stuff, over the past decade I've seen you dribble untold numbers of quality stuff back out into the market in the S&S quite often!

(06-18-2017, 09:05 AM)Admiral Wrote: Now Jack, really, is there any machinist's marking, measuring or layout tool that you don't own, or haven't in the past owned but sold??? You are the master source for that sort of stuff, over the past decade I've seen you dribble untold numbers of quality stuff back out into the market in the S&S quite often!

....................... ...Well...I could certainly say the same for you, Rich....I have seen you post some really choice tools for sale that I would have like to have found in the wild!!!!!!!! But you are right in that I have had a life-long love affair with precision layout and marking tools...I guess it's just a "hold over" from my young days as an apprentice machinist....
The bad part of selling tools is...later on you wish you had many of them back.. .

"By God, we are First Marines, and all the communist bastards in the world cannot stop us from going where we intend to go"
Col. Chesty Puller USMC At the Chosin Reservoir North Korea 1950, "The Forgotten War"

I found this anecdotal information very .... informational, and fun to learn. Did Megan have one, too? Too bad the gloat was squelched. Or, should I say, enlightened.

I actually have the Stanley original to the Veritas double arm gauge. As I heard/read, Lee has a museum of old tools for rebirth inspiration. It always reminds me of starting a vinyl song from the on-switch, rather than dropping the needle.